Wine bar owner promises restraint

There was a time when Scott Schrope patronized the New Orleans-style bar that infused Winter Park's Park Avenue with booze-fueled rowdiness in the early 1990s.

Schrope, then fresh from college, realized even then that Fat Tuesday's was not a good fit for the city's prized stretch of shops and restaurants.

It was Fat Tuesday's legacy -- an ordinance effectively banning bars on Park Avenue -- that Schrope recently had to skirt to win approval of the second location of his popular Thornton Park wine bar -- Eola Wine Company.

City officials remembered it too -- the complaints from the hotel across the street, the detritus of late-night celebrations sometimes littering the sidewalk.

The "Fat Tuesday's" provision in the zoning code prohibited establishments where alcohol consumption accounted for more than half of sales. The city wanted to maintain its shopping and restaurant district rather than encourage nightclubs.

Schrope's Thornton Park location gets about 60 percent of its sales from the wine bar, 30 percent from retail wine sales and 10 percent from food. But with Park Avenue's higher daytime foot traffic, Schrope plans to open at noon during the week, increasing the portion coming from retail and food to at least 50 percent, he said.

It will not be a restaurant, but Schrope plans to try some new things. The building, with its exposed brick walls, offers more space than his Thornton Park location.

Before Schrope's commitment to obey the anti-bar provision, city staff members worried that it would set an unwanted precedent on Park Avenue. Others might be interested in opening bars.

"We'd like to help them, but we don't want to have an Irish pub open a month later in any of these sub shops or as a conversion," City Planner Jeff Briggs said at a meeting this month, before commissioners said they could accept the plan.

Schrope has a letter of intent with the landlord of 136 S. Park Ave., and lawyers are reviewing the lease. He hopes to open on Park Avenue in January.